If you are reading this now is
because you probably received my press release a couple hours ago.
My name is Carlos di Gaspero, I’m
the President of AFLEX, MRE’s Local hired Work Association. I was once an
employee of MRE, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As I sit here waiting for my
plane going to DC to participate in AFLEX first public demonstration in favor
of employees hired abroad by the Brazilian Government, so many things are going
through my mind, but I’m going to give you a brief history of what happened
last year.
It all started because we,
locally hired employees, asked for salary reparation beginning 2011, and immediately
got a telegram from Brasíllia saying we could not have salary compensation again,
because the government was cutting down expenses. At the same time we learned
that the public servants abroad, our coworkers per say, had not only had their
salaries adjusted in 2011, but also had their residence assistance plan increased.
We were really bummed out and
wanted to send a letter to President Dilma describing our work situation, as most
of us are members of the Worker’s Party in Brazil, we voted for her and felt
that she needed to become aware of the problems we face for so many years.
So I, and couple of colleagues from
different diplomatic posts in US, started a movement called Operation Wakeup Call,
and sent a letter to Dilma on May 5th, 2011. After that many other
letters were sent to our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Patriota, to
representatives of the Brazilian Congress and to our former president Lula.
In the same environment, working
side by side, there are public servants that have all the benefits the
Brazilian Gov offers like, regular salary compensation, pension fund, residence
assistance, family assistance plan, health insurance when they retire, right to
promotion and career plan; and then you have the local hired employees that are
denied all these benefits and are abandoned by the employer.
Basically, according to MRE, we
have no rights to anything. This is only not right, it’s discrimination. We
have not had our salaries revised for decades.
Our work force is not recognized by our own government. We have no
career development plan, we have no retirement plan. We have sick people
working because they cannot retire. We
have people dying without being able to enjoy retirement. We have people
categorized as Administrative Assistants performing technical functions like Accounting,
Translation, Network Support and Administration, Economy, Journalism, and Social
Assistance to Brazilians citizens abroad. We are not paid overtime and have no
voice.
There are so many irregularities in
the way MRE treat their local hired force, that if I continue we can spend the
night here. You have to understand that these all been happening for decades,
it is not president Dilma’s fault but, as a Worker’s Party Official , it will
be a shame if she does not fix the situation.
From that first letter sent to
Dilma, we received so much support from local hired workers from all over the
world and the movement gained force very fast. In Brazil we have the support of
Senator Paulo Paim (PT-RS), the Head of the Senate Human Rights Commission. He
arranged for us to meet with Itamaraty for the first time. In this first
meeting they told us they did not recognized Operation Wakeup Call as the legal
representation of their local hired employees abroad. That was back in August of 2011.
So we decided to legalize our
movement and formalized AFLEX – an Association for the local hired by MRE abroad.
We instituted our Association last December and sent a letter to MRE hopping to
get back to the negotiation table. We still haven’t heard anything from them.
That’s why we are going to
protest on the streets of Washington DC. We want to go back to the negotiation
table. We want to be heard, we need the recognition of our work force, and we
want a career development plan.
I left MRE because I was not happy with my
work situation but I wanted to do something about it, and that’s what I’m doing
right now, trying to get better working conditions for all local hired
employees of the Brazilian Government abroad.
If you can, please broadcast this
protest.
All the local employees hired by
the Brazilian Government abroad will greatly appreciate your help.
Regards,
Carlos di Gaspero
President of AFLEX
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